In a new type of space race, museums vie for items as shuttle program nears end

In a new type of space race, museums vie for items as shuttle program nears end

The Kansas City Star
Chris O'Meara

Shuttle Atlantis completed its final mission two weeks ago, beginning its path toward becoming a museum attraction someday. More News
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When NASA puts three space orbiters up for grabs, that’s what a president of one of the nation’s space museums does. Look to see if the cost numbers work.

They didn’t.

“We stopped counting at over $80 million,” said Orwoll, CEO of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson. “And to raise that kind of money?”

Orwoll laughs at the thought. “That would be tough.”

So the Cosmosphere, which draws about 150,000 visitors a year, won’t be getting one of the flown orbiters NASA plans to retire at the end of the year when the shuttle program is discontinued.

Neither will the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma nor the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska. They’re leaving the orbiters for bigger museums in larger metro areas.

But there’s so much more to choose from in what some are calling a mammoth garage sale of shuttle program artifacts. NASA isn’t “selling” the items, so to speak, but museums, institutions and schools have to cover costs for shipping and handling, which includes getting items ready to be sent.

With space equipment, that can get pricey.

Yet the takers are lining up, eager to get a spacesuit, orbiter engine, a training simulator or even some dehydrated food that made it into space.

Once they request an item, they wait for notification whether eventually they’ll receive it. The dispersing of artifacts is now in round three, museum directors said.

The Cosmosphere has requested several items in the first two rounds that Orwoll has been notified it should be getting. Those include a launch pad escape basket, an orbiter escape system, a water dispenser and camera equipment.

His wish list is ever growing.

“We’re requesting a lot of items to do with mission accomplishment,” Orwoll said. “… I want a full cockpit trainer.”

Added Bob Fee, board chairman for the Cosmosphere: “We’ll get whatever we’re able to get to help us tell the story on man’s space exploration.”

Obviously the flown shuttles would be a huge draw. Some estimate that having one on display could double attendance in the first year.

NASA first put out feelers for the orbiters — Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis — in December 2008. The initial asking price was about $42 million.

A year later, NASA knocked the price to $28.8 million. The money covers costs to clean the orbiters, make them safe to display and transport them aboard the 747 transport jet.

NASA will remove the engines from all the orbiters before they’re given out.

“We’re not only hoping for one, we’re building a building to put one in,” said Mike Bush, director of marketing and public relations for the Museum of Flight in Seattle. “The not knowing — it’s kind of a roll of the dice.”

About two dozen museums and institutions have applied for an orbiter. Those include the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York; the Johnson Space Center outside Houston; and the Air Force National Museum in Ohio.

The privately owned Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex has money ready to spend. And it’ll need it because on top of the initial fee for shipping and handling, NASA requires a climate-controlled facility for an orbiter.

The Cosmosphere would have needed a new building, but the costs did not stop there. On the 60-mile road trek from the Salina airport to Hutchinson, a bridge would have needed reconstructing to hold the roughly 170,000-pound machine that’s 122 feet long, 56 feet high and 78 feet wide. Utility lines along the route would have been taken down and put back up.

If an orbiter goes to either the Seattle museum or the National Air and Space Museum outside of Washington, D.C. — it has the Enterprise test orbiter but may want to trade it for the Discovery — at least it would be next door to airports.

Sure, Orwoll wishes the Cosmosphere could have applied for an orbiter. But it helps that the museum already has a full-scale replica of the shuttle Endeavour.

Now, the goal is to obtain a slew of artifacts to complement it.

“This is an opportunity for our collection here to be complete,” Orwoll said. “We will get more than our fair share of artifacts coming out of this.”